Contributed by Stephen Wright
I’m Stephen Wright and I’m running for State Senate in District D. This is not my first but my third rodeo, you may remember I have ran before for congress and Lt. Governor, but now. I am running for State Senate in District D because I plan to fix what is wrong in our state by helping like minded conservatives restore the Alaska way of Life and protect the PFD. We have a legislature who is beholden to not only the special interest that lobbies against us in Juneau but they have a problem trying to rule over by way of a binding caucus of which my current senator fully subscribes to. We are giving away our representation for minimum benefit for the people at a maximum cost to the private sector. The number one problem in our state, in my opinion, is the PFD theft. It happened when Governor Bill Walker vetoed and cut our PFD more than half in 2016. The following year, Senator Bill Wielechowski filed the lawsuit against him a judge’s ruling that is unfavorable to Alaskans. Cut in half our average earnings were transferred from the PFD Corporation to the earnings reserve and then added to the budget, The PFD then became a political football, now never to be paid through a transfer ever since 2016. Today the budget process is a long drawn-out and expensive process. Sessions now drag on with most legislatures taking Per diems even while on recess costing the state more and more. My current Senator, David Wilson, voted against SB26 on the final draft, but he also voted 8 out of 12 times to allow the bill to pass and move forward as a bogus non factually formula that turns our 10% earnings into a 5% football. The legislature has now taken it upon themselves to divide our earnings in to a market value while holding their programs harmless. This budget limiting technique grows the fund bigger and bigger just to limit or cap our earnings while holding the process harmless without a vote of the people.
AKLEG has withheld our earnings by only distributing a portion of our dividends to fill the budget gap since 2016. SB26 is used to recalculate the dividends by adopting a half market value or a Dividend theft known as (the POMV) instead of the traditional Hammond 50/50, 5 year average formula as it currently is in statutory law. This is a serious crime because they have arbitrarily breached the contract between the government and the people that was written in the state constitution. The legislature should obey the PFD law instead of breaking it. The second area I’m concerned is our private economy. Alaska’s economy has been throttled due to the PFD theft and now COVID-19. We have never regained our footing since billions of dollars were diverted into the reserve earnings account. What we are doing right now is growing government which only further suppress the private sector. We have to grow our private economy or we won’t thrive because only private sector can generate revenue while government sector costs steadily increases. Our state spent 2-3 times more than national average which is costly. Besides, this bloated budget is unsustainable which is going to cause problems in the long run. Without cutting the budget, we are either see more PFD theft or more taxes which is what’s happening right now. We have to stop the overspending which the current legislature isn’t willing to do right now and then invest in and grow our rare earth minerals and develop our natural resources. Finally, as we develop our natural resources of which we are the richest and most vast state in the union. We are blessed with natural resources, we need to develop and manage it so it will bring the prosperity to our state.
Instead of taxing people with PFD cut or raise taxes, why not create jobs and generate revenue through developing natural resources. Our current senator in District D also goes along with their agenda so I have to stand up for District D and say, “Enough is enough!” Hope you can vote for me on August 10-18 so we can take our state back and restore Alaska and our PFD. Remember to vote
Stephen Wright for State Senate this August.
